2010 - A Year in Review

Empirically, this has been the biggest year of my life. Strange, emotional, frustrating, exciting, scary, I wonder if I will ever have a year like this again, or if this was the high, and it's all downhill from here.

I started 2010 in Oregon, hungover at a bar, watching the Rose Bowl. 2 weeks later I was engaged. About a week after my engagement party, my boss, who I had worked well with for 2 years, decided I was making a power play and shut it down. Hard. After a long battle with her and with HR, I left my job.

This puts us at Memorial Day. June was spent doing yoga 4-5 times a week, laying low, filing for unemployment, and booking hostels online. July was spent drinking.

August 1st, I left for Europe. The results are chronicled at alexisalive.posterous.com.

October 2nd, returned from Europe. October 7th, started at a new job. November 7th, realized the new job was a bunch of bullshit, and began looking for other work. Interviewed at Box.net.

That brings us up to this month. My boss hit on me in a hotel room in Boston, I suffered from a really bad stomach flu, and here we are. 2 weeks away from Christmas.

Where the hell did this year go?

I Quit!

There is only one way to appropriately express my enthusiasm.

How All Good Things Seem To End

Whether I want them to or not.

Sometimes I just have to wonder about the stability of my interactions with others. Things never seem to get this bad with the people that don't matter to me, but I'm always having these explosive blow-outs with the people who I care about the most. And you'd think, if these people were so damn important, I would make more of an effort to salvage things, or to avoid the moment where damage becomes irrevocable and that bridge is burned.

But I don't. Or if I do, it somehow doesn't seem to matter.

Most current applicable situation - my boss. I admired her, wanted to be like her, saw her as the logical, cynical, liberal, Bay Area successful mom that I never had, considered her a friend, spent a full hour of my engagement party drinking with her, and thought we were a team. Somehow, a few mis-steps later, we're not even talking, I am leaving the company post-haste, and she spends her time looking for reasons to fire me. It's now a race against time. Will I leave, or will I be escorted out?

How did this happen? In spite of a Liberal Arts education, several classes in Psychology, living examples of what NOT to do, and a decent brain on my shoulders, I have no clue.

When Anticipation Strikes

I am actually starting to comprehend that Europe is a reality. And I would like to board the plane right now.

Usually I have a hard time thinking about the trip without worrying that (a.) E-Bear is still without official guardian for Month 2, (b.) I will have a nervous breakdown and recreate the events from my last "visit" to Europe and (c.) being on my own won't be all it's cracked up to be or (d.) being alone WILL be all it's cracked up to be.

Today though, I am just fucking excited.

It's Right On Time

And it's time for something completely different.

After days of musing about how lonely and sad it is to be me, I'm feeling lucky I am that I don't control the Universe. I don't know who does, but it's hard not to think sometimes that there must be some plan, because things seem to happen right on time.

I think about the seemingly small incident that started it all. The fight. Yes, I got in a screaming match with DBo's crazy, hick-ville, religious fanatic aunt. And missed dinner. And ended up Hola's Mexican Cantina for their last-call half-off fried cheese plate. And got deathly ill. And called in sick. And my boss doubted said sickness. And I, of course, responded with self-righteous indigence, and a sappy letter about trust. Which apparently is frowned upon in the corporate world.

One trip to HR later, and here we are. Fat Al's European Extravaganza couldn't have come at a better time.

No I didn't get fired, but I decided that I was not being treated like a "valuable member of the team" and I could do better. So, now I've got 3 months to find a new gig, or I am prepared to come back jobless, and do some restaurant/bar work till the right gig pays off.

The practical, "success-oriented" side of me is not happy about this. However, the "me" that is frequently over-shadowed by my overly practical in-laws and my own desire for money and social status is starting to be stoked. I'm working my networks, and in the last two weeks I've talked to an author I admire, a VP at a big digital company, and the Director of PR at a major social media company. I've had to network, I've had to be resourceful, I've been pressure-prompted, and frankly, I've been thrown into the sort of situation where anything is possible.

And it's coming right on time.

Scary Admission

It's an odd day when I see my high school friends on Facebook and wonder if I am missing out.

I just saw the page of my high school idol (one of the many.) My mom would never let me hang out with her because she was "trouble" but I absolutely adored her. She was wild, romantic, spontaneous, beautiful, skinny, had two sets of parents. She had a beautiful older sister, and could speak in a somewhat educated manner about things like smoking and sex.

I'm not sure what she did those first years outside of high school but now she lives in Folsom, has all the same friends from town, and is part of the 2-3 kids club. Like a lot of the other girls I knew growing up, her pictures and status updates are filled with afternoon naps, swimming, yoga pants, 10am walks, outings with other mommies, trips to Costco, dates with much loved husbands, etc. If photos tell the story, she spends her days in jeans and cute sundresses, her friends are life-long, and she really seems to enjoy family, her mother, and the few drunk party nights she has.

Sometimes I think it would be much simpler to live that way, as opposed to being me. My constant need for newness, complexity, competition, and status make it difficult to be happy with family-land. But it's a rare day that I don't feel restless. She seems so calm and complete. It makes me wonder if there is really something to the whole 'husband and babies' thing.

Of course the flip side is that once you go down that road, there is no going back. And maybe she just looks like she's having a blast because those are the pictures on Facebook. No one ever advertises the boredom, apathy, and stagnancy of it all. I just wish I knew - does she ever look at my profile and wish she could be back on her own?

Why is Moving On So Hard?

A cliche image for a cliche lament. How does one deal with moving on, heading down that lonely open road?

I happened to read this blog post yesterday, and it eloquently expressed how I am feeling about life (today) perfectly. Like this author, I love change, I constantly talk about change, I go bat-shit insane when life is too boring, but I hate when I am forced to change before I am ready. Particularly when it comes to relationships.

Right now, I am pretty mad about some injustice done to me, so it's easier to think about leaving places and people behind, but I hate to think that my departure will be just as timely and meaningless to them as I pretend it is to me. That they'll all be better off when I leave for my new gig.

The shitty thing about moving on is this - you have to accept that the other person (or group of people) will ultimately move on too.